8 Must-Have Apps For Uber & Lyft Drivers

Joe, contributor over at the The Rideshare Guy, is going to go over eight must-have apps for Uber and Lyft drivers. Let’s jump in and take a look!

Watch Joe’s video, then check out the transcript below to see all of his recommendations at a glance.

Mystro – Drive for Uber and Lyft at the same time

The first app we’ll discuss is Mystro, and it is actually only available on Android currently, but iPhone users can join the wait list to see when it will be released for the iPhone. But here’s a look at their website, and basically Mystro is an app that allows drivers driving from multiple services to seamlessly manage all of those services within one app. If you’re driving for both Lyft and Uber, you can manage both of those driver apps within the Mystro app instead of needing to go back and forth between the Uber Driver and the Lyft Driver apps. We’ll scroll down here. There’s platform switching.

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You can seamlessly drive from multiple on-demand platforms by allowing Mystro’s app switching feature to control your platforms and do the switching for you. There’s also hands-free automation, so you can accept the rides that you want from each service automatically instead of needing to interact with the drive apps when a request is made. Let’s take a look, you can also filter trip requests so there’s also filters where you can filter out Uber X trips, POOL trips, EATS trips or Select trips. Also, there are service filters, so if you drive for all the different tiers of Uber all the way up to SUV, you could choose to select which tiers you want to accept rides for.

Anywhere from Uber X all the way up to SUV, you can choose which trips you want to accept rides for. As far as the cost, you have a few options. You can do the Mystro free trial, which will last 30 days, you can give it a try there. You also have the annual plan, which costs 99.95. You can go on a monthly basis, which would be 11.95 per month. You can also do a per use plan, so for each ride, you begin that Mystro managed on your behalf, you will be billed 20 cents per ride. Mystro is just a great all in one app where you can manage all of your on-demand rideshare driving services.

QuickBooks Self-Employed – Track expenses and make taxes easier

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a one-stop shop for taxes and mileage tracking and keeping track of all your expenses throughout the year. You can use it to track expenses and pay quarterly taxes. You can also use it to track mileage, you can do that manually or set it up to track mileage automatically. You can instantly track and organize expenses. It’s just a great app for managing your ride share business.

As far as the costs, it will cost you $5 a month for your first three months but then $10 a month after that. You can also sign up for the Self-Employed Tax Bundle, which basically connects QuickBooks Self-Employed with your TurboTax account, makes it seamless for end of the year taxes. That bundle is $12 a month for the first three months and $17 a month after that.

The Uber and Lyft passenger apps

Two more apps that you should own are the Uber and Lyft Passenger apps. Using these passenger apps, you can get a feel for the area that you’re in. You can see other drivers around you, where they’re positioned, and you can position yourself accordingly. I also like to have these in case of network issues, in case I feel like I’m not being seen by the passenger app. I can go into each passenger App, and I can see if my vehicle is actually being seen, and if it isn’t, I can move to an area with better service.

How to use the Uber passenger app

Google Maps and Waze

Google Maps and Waze are the two navigation apps that you can choose to launch from both the Lyft and Uber Driver apps.

I personally prefer Google Maps but I do have both Google Maps and Waze. I recommend having both of them because each of them can provide different things than the other. I just prefer the look and feel and features that Google Maps provides. I will lean on Waze sometimes. I find that Waze has the best traffic data, so if traffic is really bad, I find that Google Maps likes to rely on highways and Waze will often find good routes off highways, side streets. Waze in my experience always chooses the best, most time efficient routes. t’s good to give both a try to see which you prefer yourself.

GasBuddy

GasBuddy helps you find gas near any area that you end up in, so you can basically find the cheapest gas nearby. You can see here it shows the spread. Nearby where I am, it’s anywhere from $2.44 all the way up to $2.69. You can select this Find Gas Near You button. You’ll get a list view and you can also get a map view. You can see where each gas station is, what the price is and how nearby they are to you. Using GasBuddy, you can save yourself a decent amount of money throughout the year by choosing the cheapest gas nearby where you are.

Have an app that finds restrooms

You want to have a Restroom Finder. I’m on an iPhone and I use an app called Flush. There’s also an app called Flush that’s available in the Google Play Store. Both of these apps are crowdsourced and basically people identify where public restrooms are, and they place them on the map in each app. There’s also a Restroom Finder that’s currently exclusive to San Francisco called Good2Go.

Honorable mentions: Stride, UZURV, RYDAR

There’s Stride Tax. What Stride Tax is similar to QuickBooks Self-Employed where it’s a one stop shop, one-stop app for tracking your expenses, your mileage. It’s an alternative QuickBooks Self-Employed and it is free. Check out our Stride Tax review here. Another app is Square, an app to accept payments. If you decide to give rides on your own, you can accept payment via the Square app, instead of needing to accept cash. There’s UZURV, where riders can reserve rides from specific Uber and Lyft drivers. We as drivers can create profiles and be available as UZURV drivers through the UZURV application.

Another app is RYDAR, an assistant for drivers. You can monitor real time surge rates, you can track mileage, you can plan events, and you can also use it for navigation to find optimal pickup spots.

Thanks for watching! Drive safe.

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